Islands of the Damned

by R. V. Burgin

  As we were starting our rest, the Fifth Regiment’s First and Second battalions were being thrown against the remaining Jap positions on the northern end of Peleliu. Second Battalion mopped up around the phosphate plant. First Battalion attacked and occupied the third of the four hills extending west to east across the island. The next day they turned their attention to the fourth and highest hill, which had a Jap radar on top. By late afternoon they were on the summit. The next day, September 30, they climbed into trucks and amtracs for the ride down the east road to the smaller claw, where they joined us at Purple Beach.

  The last concentration of Japs on Peleliu were holed up in the rocky heart of the Umurbrogol, in a hellish jumble of coral rock called the Pocket. The only clear way into the Pocket was through a narrow valley called the Horseshoe that dead-ended in a steep slope, what Texans would call a box canyon. Beyond the Horseshoe was a seemingly endless series of ridges and valleys—Hill 140, Ridge 3, Boyd Ridge, Baldy, Wattie Ridge, Hill 120, Hill 100A. It went on and on.

  In the center of the Horseshoe was a large sink that contained the only standing fresh water on the island. Japs would sneak out at night to fill their canteens here. The east wall of the Horseshoe was formed by a steep ridge that was anchored on the south by Hill 100. Hills seemed to be named for their elevation in feet. The ridge had been named for Lieutenant Colonel Walt, the regiment’s executive officer who’d come looking for us the night we were lost in the scrub.

  Overlooking the Horseshoe from the west was a row of crags and knobs starting with Five Sisters on the south, then Five Brothers. West of these was another valley, Wildcat Bowl. Beyond that rose a sheer cliff called the China Wall. The other side of that was Death Valley. From most of these ridges, the Japs could fire down on the west road.

  For two weeks, the First Marines then Seventh Marines had thrown themselves at the Pocket, carving away slices from one side or the other until the Japs were pushed into an area no more than five hundred by a thousand yards. But this area was shot through with caves, most of them screened by thick brush. Our Shermans had advanced into the Horseshoe with the Seventh Marines and blasted every cave opening they could find. Then for some reason we never understood, headquarters had ordered the tanks withdrawn and sent back to Pavuvu. In their place came Shermans from the Army’s 710th Tank Battalion. They went in and pounded the same caves. Marine Corsairs dropped napalm, which burned off the covering trees until the ridges were as bare and scruffy as a mangy dog. That helped some.

  On October 1 we got word to stand by to join the Seventh Marines for a final assault on the Pocket. The morning of October 3, trucks dumped us north of the airfield, where the east and west roads came together. We started west toward the Five Sisters. Our move on the Five Sisters was supposed to divert the Japs’ attention from the Seventh Marines. Far to our right, they were moving down the east road to make another attack on Walt Ridge.

  We led off with a heavy artillery barrage, then our Corsairs took over. They’d leave the airstrip, which was just behind us, and drop napalm on the rocky spires just in front of us. Then they’d wheel around, return to the airstrip and reload. The whole circuit couldn’t have taken more than a minute or two. Most of the pilots didn’t even bother to draw up their landing gear. It must have been the shortest bombing mission in the war.

  Meanwhile we set up our guns and laid down heavy mortar fire in front of the advancing riflemen. They got to the first of the pinnacles about noon and within a few hours had taken four of the five. Their problem was the second pinnacle in the chain, which lay north of the others. To get to it, we had to squeeze between two of the other Sisters into Death Valley. We soon found out where it got its name.

  Two weeks of fighting had stripped the trees bare and littered the ground with a knotted mess of tree limbs and rock. As we advanced, the Japs had a clear view from their caves up in the crags to our right. Our mortars were dug in a few dozen yards behind the riflemen, who were making good progress until, late in the afternoon, rifle and machine-gun fire started hitting them from everywhere at once. I’ll say this about the Japs, they were disciplined. They’d hold their fire until we walked right into them.

  The whole company was thrown back. There were calls for corpsmen everywhere. It got so bad that ammo carriers ran forward to help carry stretchers, leaving just a few of us to man the guns. Jap snipers seemed to single out corpsmen and stretcher carriers, and we tried to shield them by throwing smoke grenades. Every man’s worst nightmare was that he would be hit while carrying a stretcher and dump a wounded Marine on the ground.

  Before we got out of there, we’d lost five killed and fifteen wounded. It was K Company’s worst day on Peleliu. We fell back and set up a new line just before sunset and waited for them to come creeping out of their caves. We were only a few hundred yards ahead of where we’d started out that morning. But we were in the open, where it would make it easier to spot infiltrators. During the night artillery fired star shells, which burst overhead, catching our visitors like a flashbulb. They came single or in pairs all through the night. At sunup we counted twenty-one dead Japs around us.

  The next two days were the same story. We moved forward into the Five Sisters, ran into intense fire and fell back. We lost nine more men, one of them killed.

  All the time we kept up the mortar fire. George Sarrett and I were on the front lines, observing. Neither of us had caught a wink of sleep in three days. Just before it got dark I found I couldn’t focus my eyes anymore. I called John Marmet on the phone.

  “John, I gotta come in. I’m absolutely dead.”

  “Okay, come on in.”

  George and I scrambled back through the twilight until we got to where we’d set up the guns. There were two of them, each firing a round every two or three minutes, for harassment as much as anything. In front of one of the guns was a shell crater, and I flopped in. You get in front of a 60mm mortar, it’s loud. The guns were firing right over my head every couple minutes all night long.

  I don’t even remember falling asleep. The next thing I knew Marmet was nudging me awake. It was eight o’clock the next morning. I’d slept in all that racket for twelve hours.

  You get that way. You get to the point that you don’t give a damn if you live or die, you’re so exhausted. You’re living in a nightmare. It’s impossible to imagine the look and smell of a battlefield if you’ve never been on one, and impossible to forget if you have. The ground where we now found ourselves was littered with discarded combat gear, Jap rifles that we’d smashed so they couldn’t be used again, spent shells, empty ammo boxes, bloody dressings, half-eaten rations rotting in the sun.

  Half of us had diarrhea. You tried to dispose of it in empty ration cans and the like, but you were never far from the stink of shit. We and the Japs both tried to retrieve our dead, but too many times they were left where they fell. In the heat and humidity it didn’t take them long to go sour, decaying and rotting and adding to the stench. Big metallic-green blowflies swarmed over everything. If you saw a corpse move, it would be maggots. Throw a rock into a bush and a cloud of flies would rise up thick enough to cast a shadow. They buzzed from the bodies and the shit. They were even crawling into our rations and into our canteen cups.

  I don’t know when it was that they finally started coming over in planes, spraying everything with DDT to keep down the flies. If it had any effect, we didn’t notice. They were still thick as raisins.

  Late one afternoon Sergeant Jim McEnery came upon the blackened and bloated bodies of four Marines in a ravine at the foot of one of the Five Sisters. They were laid out on stretchers as though somebody was carrying them to first aid. They’d been there at least two weeks.

  A little later I found four more in a rock crevice. From their equipment I judged they’d been advance scouts from an intelligence unit. The Japs had hacked them to pieces. They’d cut off heads and hands. One of them, they’d cut off his penis and testicles and stuffed them in his mouth.

  It made
me dizzy and sick. We’d heard the stories. On New Britain Japs had tied Marines to trees and used them for bayonet practice. So I never had felt any regrets about killing a Jap in combat. Never remorse about any of it. But after the sight of those mutilated bodies, I guessed I’d hate Japs as long as I lived.

  * * *

  While we were throwing ourselves against the Five Sisters, the Seventh Marines walked into a slaughter north of Walt Ridge that cut them up so badly they were pulled out. The regiment had lost 46 percent of its fighting strength and was in no condition to carry on. Trucks picked up the survivors and drove them back to the Purple Beach rest area. The First Marines had already pulled out for Pavuvu with over 70 percent losses. That left us. Peleliu had cost us 36 percent of our men, wounded and killed. But we were the only Marines General Rupertus had left.

  Our commander, Colonel Harold “Bucky” Harris, had a well-known philosophy. Expend ammunition, not men. He had been rethinking the whole campaign against the Pocket. Whatever happened next, it wouldn’t be another headlong rush. Under Colonel Harris, the Fifth would move slowly and deliberately, reducing the Pocket ridge by ridge and cave by cave. Foot by foot if necessary.

  On October 6 Third Battalion was pulled back from the Five Sisters. At nine o’clock the next morning we went into the Horseshoe behind Army tanks. Twice that day we pounded the lower slopes of Walt Ridge and the Five Brothers. Midmorning, when the tanks ran out of ammo, we withdrew to refuel and rearm. Then we went back in, this time taking demolition teams and amtracs with flamethrowers. We went on until early afternoon, when the tanks ran out of ammo again. Then we pulled out and were sent south for a rest.

  About this time a three-day typhoon swept over Peleliu. The temperatures fell into the eighties, which was a blessing. But it turned the coral dust into gumbo. The mud clogged our equipment and everything bogged down. Supplies couldn’t get in over the raging surf. Streams of Curtiss Commando cargo planes from Guam air-dropped essentials. After the storm passed temperatures shot up over a hundred again and the mud turned back into dust. Things were as they had been.

  On October 10, K Company was pulled out of reserves and sent to clean out a nest of snipers who had been firing down on the west road. We were well behind the front lines, in territory that was supposed to be secure. But once again the Japs had hunkered down and waited. A week before, at a spot along the road called Dead Man’s Curve, they had fired on an Army convoy and brought it to a stop. Everyone bailed out and ran for cover, ducking down behind trucks or diving behind rocks at the side of the road. Colonel Joseph Hankins, commander of First Division’s Headquarters Company, had come along in his jeep to check on reports of snipers. When the convoy stopped, Colonel Hankins got out and walked forward to see what was holding things up. Just as everyone yelled at him to get down, he was hit in the chest. He died lying there in the roadway, the highest-ranking Marine killed on Peleliu.

  We had a couple Army tanks along with us this time to provide cover. We were taking rifle and mortar fire from several places along a cliff, but we couldn’t see where it was coming from. Hillbilly Jones’s rifle squad was just up the road, and as the morning dragged on a couple of his men were hit, and one of them was killed. Hillbilly decided to try to get a better view of the shooters from one of the tanks. I was about 150 feet away directing mortar fire and I didn’t see everything that happened. But after discussing the situation briefly with a staff officer from battalion headquarters, Hillbilly climbed onto the back of the tank and scrambled forward to slap the side of the turret to alert the gunner what he was up to. He was just peeking around the turret when a single shot hit him in the side and knocked him down. He rolled off the tank into the road, and the call went out for a corpsman. While we watched, Hillbilly picked himself up, bleeding from the side, and pulled himself back onto the tank. Then he stood up. The next shot caught him in the chest and knocked him flat again. This time he didn’t move.

  Word spread down the line—Hillbilly’s been hit. By the time I got to the tank, stretcher bearers had carried away the body. All the memories came flooding back. Hillbilly carrying his guitar down to our tents on Pavuvu. Lazy days singing and cracking jokes on the deck of a troopship. Guard duty drinking grapefruit juice and alcohol, and afterward the hangover, on Banika.

  For the rest of the day and into the next we blasted away with machine guns, mortars, and rifle fire at every crack or opening we could find along the west road. We took plenty of fire in return, until eventually it tapered off. Not once during that time did we see a single live Jap.

  The day after Hillbilly was killed, Second Battalion made it south all the way to the foot of Hill 140, at the head of the Horseshoe. By midafternoon they had taken it, and after that they held it against a sharp counterattack. The battalion had fought its way in from the east road past Baldy, where the Seventh Marines had been beaten so badly. This time bulldozers smoothed the way, clearing a path for flame-throwing amtracs and sealing caves as they advanced.

  Command viewed Hill 140 as the key to the whole operation. Its west side fell away sharply to the floor of the Horseshoe. The top looked down on four of the Five Brothers, just to the south. K Company’s mortars were rushed back along the west road and let out at a place where we could proceed on foot to Hill 140. There we would rejoin the rest of Third Battalion, which was on its way to relieve the Second Battalion early the next day. First Battalion had already gone into reserve. That left us the last Marine battalion fighting on Peleliu.

  The death of Hillbilly Jones had been a blow. Soon we would absorb another.

  Command’s idea had been to plant a 75mm pack howitzer on the top of the hill. But the crest was too sharp and narrow for a gun emplacement, and soon both gun and crew had been dislodged by Japanese fire.

  When the Third Battalion arrived, Second Battalion was taking fire from three sides. Where the hill dropped into the Horseshoe, there was no protecting flank. In effect, they held the hill on just three sides. The other was exposed. Orders for Third Battalion were to secure the south side and take the bend out of the line.

  In the morning they started working their way up the hill to where Second Battalion was dug in just short of the crest. Everybody was warning them not to show their heads over the top. Jap snipers on the far side were alert, and deadly. But someone needed to see what was beyond the hill in order to direct the battalion’s fire.

  Captain Haldane, Johnny Marmet, Sergeant Jim McEnery and a couple other NCOs had made their way to the top and were flat on their bellies trying to figure out how to get a look at the other side. Second Battalion’s own machine gunners were dug in so low, they could hardly see what they were shooting at. They had to sight their guns by looking under the barrels.

  This was not satisfactory to Captain Haldane, who was himself an old machine gunner. He slithered forward a few feet and cautiously raised his head.

  Everybody heard a sharp thwack and knew instantly what it meant. Those who were close enough said his head just exploded. There was no point in even calling for a corpsman.

  We had just arrived at the foot of the hill, looking for our new positions, when Sergeant Marmet came stumbling down the slope, a Thompson submachine gun dangling from his hand by the strap. I knew the moment I saw his face something had happened.

  “Hey, Johnny,” I said. “What’s going on?”

  He shuffled his feet and gazed off for a moment. “Okay, guys, let’s get squared away here,” he said. Then silence. We looked at one another.

  “What the hell’s wrong?” I asked.

  “The Japs got the skipper a few minutes ago on the ridge,” he said. It was like a kick in the stomach. Somebody threw down the base plate and the mortar tube. Somebody said, “Goddamn.” Sledge turned away. We stood there paralyzed and silent.

  Finally Marmet pulled himself together. “All right,” he said. “All right. Let’s move out.” And we did.

  It was more than a death in the family, losing Hillbilly Jones and Andy Haldane like
that. They had been on Guadalcanal together, on New Britain and Peleliu. I found out later Haldane had been about to recommend me for the Silver Star for our action at the bunker on Ngesebus. He was killed before he could write it up. It didn’t make things any better and it didn’t make things any worse, as far as I was concerned. Hillbilly and Ack-Ack had been the core of our officers, leaders of men. Leaders of Marines.

  * * *

  First Lieutenant Thomas “Stumpy” Stanley was brought in from the battalion command post to take charge. The mortar squads were lobbing shells over the rim of Hill 140 into the northern end of the Horseshoe and at Walt Ridge beyond.

  Jap artillery was answering us less and less. We got the feeling they were just waiting in their holes, like spiders. It rained off and on, and when the sun came out the rain turned to steam. The smell of death and the flies hung over everything, worse than ever. From where we looked out there wasn’t a speck of green anywhere on the island. We’d stripped it bare. All that was left was gray rock and rolling smoke.

  On the thirteenth, K Company advanced 150 yards and straightened out the lines. We spent part of the next day with demo squads, sealing caves and stringing communication wire to hinder infiltrators. We figured the more pressure we put on them, the more determined the Japs would be to infiltrate, or even to break out. We heard that the Eighty-first Army Division, the “Wildcat” Division, was on its way from Angaur to relieve us. We also heard that command had declared the assault phase of the invasion—whatever that meant—officially ended. It had been twenty-eight days since we came ashore on Orange Beach Two.

  This is where we finished our war on Peleliu. At dawn on October 15, the Army troops marched in, looking grim. They had six more weeks of combat ahead of them. We were headed out. We boarded trucks to the north end of the island, where the Seabees had set up a new bivouac area. For the first time in months we slept in tents, and the tents had plywood decks, which we hadn’t even had on Pavuvu. There were showers, a cookhouse, a mess tent where we could eat sitting down at tables. They had hung a sheet between trees where they could show movies. We shaved, washed our hair, brushed our teeth. Then we brushed our teeth again, just because we could do it.